Although I don’t agree with the implicit meaning of this Fast Company title (i.e. that public services currently do not help people – whereas the real issue is the degree of impact), I am always excited to hear the latest updates on Reboot, a design agency that focuses on service design in international development, particularly if it is through an interview with Reboot principal Panthea Lee.

“Plenty of thought goes into good industrial design and good interaction design. We do the same for public and social services. In our view, service design is a multidisciplinary approach to creating more useful, effective, and efficient services.

In the space of international development, we find designers particularly well suited to the task of creating good services because they are highly analytical systems thinkers.

Services are more than just pulling a lever to get a result. Services are a complex series of interlocking relationships and institutions, and each one is different. Their design requires deep empathy for users and a nuanced understanding of context. And you’ll never get it right on the first go–they require significant testing and refining until they’re right.”

Design for Service Innovation & Development: Final Report
Edited by y Daniela Sangiorgi, Alison Prendiville, Jeyon Jung and Eun Yu
May 2015
DeSID (Design for Service Innovation and Development) is a six-month scoping study funded by the AHRC …

Last month the people from Irish UX consultancy Frontend Design looked at the UX revolution in healthcare and how changes in that sector are moving towards putting the customer at the centre of the service. …

How to thrive in the next economy
by John Thackara
Thames & Hudson
August 2015, 192pp
Abstract
Drawing on a lifetime of travel in search of real-world alternatives that work, I describe how communities the world over are creating a …

Last week the UK media were suddenly abuzz on how behavioural insights can help government decisions and actions by being able to nudge behaviour in a favourable direction. Apparently it has become a cure-all and …

Far from being a panacea, small loans add to poverty and undermine people by saddling them with unsustainable debt, argues anthropologist Dr. Jason Hickel of the London School of Economics:
What’s so fascinating about the microfinance …

Acclaimed anthropologist Stefana Broadbent leads a new "Collective Intelligence" unit at Nesta, the UK innovation charity, that is "looking at ways to support the emergence of Collective Intelligence to solve complex societal issues".
More concretely, they …

Designers, writes Cennydd Bowles in a Design Council opinion piece, have a central role in safeguarding digital products so they not only empower but also protect users.
This responsibility starts with designers’ own output. Design teams …